


have you come to serve the horde?

by voksen



Category: Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Canon Patching, Gen, Pre-Canon, Timeline What Timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vol'jin adjusts to Orgrimmar a little faster than Orgrimmar gets used to him.  This is probably entirely Rokhan's fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	have you come to serve the horde?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UrbanAmazon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/gifts).



The sting of Zalazane's betrayal is still a fresh barb in Vol'jin's heart as he rides north along the coast. There is a trail beaten into the red dirt further inland, but it intersects with a guard outpost and half a dozen or more pig farms before continuing on to Orgrimmar, and he has no wish to meet anyone on this road unless he has to.

His guard rides with him, silent as he is - they too are Darkspear, they too have lost much on the Echo Isles - and the only sounds are the occasional hiss from one or another of the raptors and the muted thud of scythed claws on sand. 

When the cliffs rise up in front of them, he silently turns his mount west; the time for avoidance is past. The others follow. Another hour passes and though the temperature does not change, the sea-smell dies out of the air, replaced by dry dust, and he wonders that anyone would choose to live like this.

 

As they arrive at the city's gates, heavy wooden things curving like massive fangs, Rokhan lopes out to meet them. It's good to see him; the orcs have been good allies and fierce fighters, no one could deny that, but Vol'jin is more aware every day he's among them that they are _different._ The loa do not speak to them like they do to the Darkspear - to the Shadow Hunters - and even the spirits touch them in strange ways.

"Hey, mon," he greets Rokhan, then forces his tongue to the harsh, Orcish syllables he will need to use hereafter. "What be happenin' in the city? Things settled yet?"

"Good enough," Rokhan answers, though there's a cant to his head, an unvoiced whisper in the air between them that tells Vol'jin there's more he needs to know, more that can't be said even around those they trust. "Thrall said he be seein' ya in the Hold as soon as ya get in."

Vol'jin leans down in the saddle, offers Rokhan a hand up; he takes it, swinging easily up to settle behind him, and they ride the short distance into the jaws of Orgrimmar, coming out in a wide bowl of a valley, filled to the brim with the thunder of construction and the shouts of orcs. His raptor shies beneath him, shaking its head and screaming back at the clamor - which is so loud the raptor's cry goes unnoticed. "They got a place for the raptors?" he asks Rokhan, turning his head slightly to be heard.

Rokhan nods. "Back near where they be keepin' their wolves," he says.

Vol'jin half-smiles to himself. The decision is his, Rokhan's saying without words, despite Thrall's standing order; loyalty in dark places.

But there's no reason to take advantage of it and every reason to go along with what's wanted of him for now. Judging by the amount of fortifications in front of them - and the sweeping, half-built decorative tusks - he'd say that this Hold is just ahead. "I think we be goin' to see Thrall, then," he says.

He calls one of the guards over and passes her the reins of his raptor, waiting for Rokhan to get down before dismounting himself. "Ya heard Rokhan?" he asks. She nods. "Take them to the wolf den and see them settled before ya come back."

Rokhan watches the raptors go, hunkered down slightly, then stretches tall, shakes out his shoulders, turns to Vol'jin. "Things be strange here between the orcs and humans," he says in Zandali, his voice low enough that Vol'jin's sharp hearing can barely catch the words.

"Strange how?" Vol'jin asks in the same way as he starts towards the Hold - easy, relaxed... and slow enough that they'll have time to say what they need before they get in earshot of the guards he can see waiting around outside the tusked building.

"They fight, ya," Rokhan says. "But not because Thrall be wantin' it, or Proudmoore. It's only old blood between them stoppin' peace... or an alliance."

"A lot of blood," he says. A lot of blood spilled against the Admiral alone, without even beginning on the war the orcs had lost in the Eastern Kingdoms, before they had ever met the Darkspear. "Too much to cross, I be thinkin', even for Thrall."

Rokhan shrugs. "Could be. But don't be underestimatin' him, mon."

Vol'jin doesn't intend to.

 

Without even the slight breeze that stirs the valley, without windows and lattices, the inside of Grommash Hold is close and stifling. The ceilings are tall, at least, though Vol'jin suspects that's intended more to intimidate than anything else.

Thrall stands from his large chair as the two trolls pass the last set of guards and emerge into the large round chamber. "Welcome to Orgrimmar," he says, smiling widely and baring those small orcish tusks that still look feminine to Vol'jin. His eyes are disarmingly blue, his face open and honest-looking; his hair black, a solid contrast to the white of the other orcs who stand nearby.

"Lok'tar," replies Vol'jin from behind his mask; there are many changes he is willing to lead the Darkspear into for the sake of their new allies, but some things must stay as they are for now, and a certain amount of formality in these situations is one of them.

Rokhan salutes - first to Thrall, then Vol'jin - and turns back, leaving Vol'jin to walk alone into the center of the room. 

Thrall comes forward to meet him, reaches out to clasp his hand firmly. "I am glad you've decided to join us here," he says. "Rokhan often speaks of your wisdom and skill."

If Vol'jin had had any remaining doubts about Rokhan's loyalty, that would have dispelled them completely, considering that the last time he and Rokhan had been together for long, barring brief moments of battle, conference and then later celebration, Vol'jin had been an unblooded whelp given more to pranks than wise counsel - and Rokhan himself, already long a Shadow Hunter. It could be that the spirits had guided Rokhan on what to say, of course, but Vol'jin thinks most likely he's a good liar - a valuable skill to have.

He decides not to mention it either way. "The Darkspear be part of the Horde, now," he says instead. It could be enough of an answer on its own, but something tells him he shouldn't leave it at that; this is an alliance he needs to hold stronger than tribe to tribe. This should be personal. "And I be in ya debt," he adds, softly, so that his voice won't carry to the rest of Thrall's advisors, "for what ya did for Sen'jin and the rest."

Those bright blue eyes light up with pride, and when Thrall says "It was an honor to help," Vol'jin is inclined to believe him.

"Then it be an honor to serve," he replies, and whether he truly means it or not, the prospect of living in Orgrimmar for the foreseeable future no longer looks quite so bleak.

 

A week or two later, Vol'jin discovers that not only is Rokhan an _excellent_ liar, but there is in fact a conspiracy of sorts among the Darkspear who had left the Islands early to sail to Kalimdor with Thrall.

It begins when he passes the archery range, on his way to the wolf den to visit the raptors; there's training going on, a string of orcs firing at targets, missing more or less catastrophically every time. He stops to watch, slightly bemused - though, of course, they're all built for infantry, muscled and squat like miniature berserkers, and as he's seen their fellows in action back south, he doesn't fault them too much for this... display.

He's only been there a minute or so when their sergeant, green face flushed dark with rage, storms over to him. "Think you can do any better, old man?" he barks, and Vol'jin, startled, thinks _old man?_

The sergeant grabs the bow out of the hands of the nearest grunt and thrusts it at Vol'jin. "Well?! Show them how it's done... if you still can."

Vol'jin, who is honestly not entirely sure what is going on, still recognizes a challenge for respect when he hears one; the Darkspear are new enough within the odd, clashing hierarchy of the Horde that he isn't inclined to turn it down. 

He takes the bow, flexes it gently: it's average at best, made for hands with more and shorter fingers than his own, far too short for his height and length of arm, and it has nothing near the pull he's used to. He'd be a poor hunter if that meant he couldn't hit a target from this distance. Five arrows are stuck in the ground in front of the grunt whose bow he has; a moment later, five arrows are in the center ring of the target and he's handing the bow back to its owner. 

The sergeant stares at him; Vol'jin stares back, says simply, after a moment: "Looks like I still can, mon."

 

After that, he pays close attention to the thousand little oddities that happen every day, which he had before chalked up to orcs being orcs. When someone serves him first, for example, or offers to bring him a chair (what would he want with a chair, he never says), or tries to excuse him from something - though no one else is as ...direct as the sergeant had been.

He catches up with Rokhan late one night in Grommash Hold - Rokhan having come in late to report from scouting, Vol'jin up late and haunting the hallways.

"Evenin', mon," Vol'jin says from the shadows of a doorway, and catches a minute startle, though he hides it well. "Been wantin' to talk with ya."

"That so?" Rokhan says.

"When I was meetin' with Thrall," he begins, leaving the darkness behind to walk alongside Rokhan, "he said ya be speakin' about me. Often."

Rokhan shrugs.

"Somehow," Vol'jin muses, dead serious, "I think ya be tellin' him more interestin' stories than the one where I swapped half Gadrin's hex powder for fish scales."

There's a choked sort of snorting noise as Rokhan tries not to laugh and eventually just gives in. "Well," he says. "I didn't know that one was you, mon."

They walk a second in silence before Rokhan shakes his head, sighs. "They be knowin' power well enough when they see it, but for them, Thrall be almost too young to lead. They don't understand how the loa can test ya." He shrugs again, eloquently. "So we let them think ya be older. Maybe we been overdoin' it a bit."

"Ya had that much faith I'd come back, after I'd been in First Home so long?"

"We never doubted ya, Vol'jin," Rokhan says quietly. "Ya always been a leader at heart, always been lookin' out for the people who be followin'. Ya be ya papa's son. We knew ya'd come back a Shadow Hunter."

There's no mention of Zalazane's name, and Vol'jin is almost more grateful for that than for the praise, high as it is. "Thank ya, mon," he says, letting it hang between them for a few serious seconds. "Even if it means I gotta be lettin' them think I be as old as yaself."

They're almost to Thrall's chambers and the guards outside them, so Rokhan has to turn this laugh into a coughing fit, his normally-gentle eyes sparking with amusement and the promise of retribution.

Vol'jin smiles, thumps him on the back to help him get over his 'cough', and leaves him to report.


End file.
